


between the sinners and the saints

by books_and_spite



Category: The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani
Genre: Drabble Sequence, F/F, F/M, Gen, I'm Sorry, Love, hey can someone please tell me why people like this, i don't even like this but like i'm being Sad so deal with it, it honestly isn't that good?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26728027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/books_and_spite/pseuds/books_and_spite
Summary: Sophie loves, and loves, and loves again.
Relationships: Nicola/Sophie (The School for Good and Evil)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	between the sinners and the saints

_i. eros (rafal)_

It consumes her. It is irrational and fiery and dangerous and she keeps to it anyway.

Sophie is somewhat aware that this isn’t what love is supposed to be. But the School Master, no, _Rafal,_ is so very powerful and so very smoldering and so very handsome. 

She tries not to give in. But she does accept his ring, in the end. 

(He is handsome. He is her counterpart. He is everything she has always wanted. Want, want, _want._ And yet she doesn’t want it.)

Two nights later. A private moment. They are sitting in her room. 

Rafal cups her face and kisses her. This is the second time. His lips are cold against hers. She kisses back.

There is nothing gentle or sweet about it. She still doesn’t pull away.

(She destroys his ring and smiles when she does it.)

_ii. philia (agatha)_

Her relationship with Agatha is somewhat unique. They’re sisters. But they were best friends before that. Enemies, somewhere in between.

Sophie has always been jealous of Agatha, really. 

She had everything and Sophie got nothing, nothing at all.

( _I’m me,_ she says. She’s lying.)

She never does try to fix it. Until all is said and all is done, she lets Agatha come back to her again and again and again. So very toxic. She cannot bring herself to care.

Until the day after Agatha’s wedding.

She sits with her best friend, her sister, her counterpart, her better half. She looks at Agatha, smiling and happy and radiant, and realizes: _it’s better to forgive. It’s better to love._

She kisses Agatha, very gently, on the cheek. 

Agatha grants her a kiss on the cheek back, and they lean on each other, and this must be love, and this is _enough._

(It’s not enough.)

_iii. ludus (hort)_

Hort is the next person she loves, in the end. Lightness, and playfulness, and it’s so easy to fall into laughter with him.

Sophie thinks that maybe he brings out another side of her, the Evergirl side, the flirty, sassy side. It isn’t really her, she knows. It’s the her that she wants to be and she likes it, truly. 

But as the months pass by, it becomes harder and harder to connect this banter with love. Love. Is that all her life is centered around now?

No. She doesn’t _want_ it to be. 

There’s a night when they’re both laughing in some room or another, drinking cheap sparkling juice out of cheaper cups, and Hort tells her, “I don’t think this is going to work, you know.”

“Yeah,” she shrugs.

He kisses her, boldly, a kiss of friendship, playfully, and she laughs louder.

This feels _good._

_iv. pragma (nicola)_

She doesn’t even try to fall the next time. She does anyway. 

Sophie is so fucking in love with Nicola that it scares her. Because she still remembers what happened the last time she fell in love with the School Master. No, no, no. This is not happening again. 

But she falls in so easily with Nicola. She memorizes the shape of Nicola’s eyes, her smile, her laugh, she knows every line of Nicola’s story so damn intimately.

So scared. So scared.

Nicola is always smiling, there to catch her when she falls. There to provide a witty retort or a smart joke. 

Nicola. Gods.

They never do talk about it. She’s too nervous to. She says the words in her heart, but never out loud.

Until the day Nicola looks at her, and reaches out a hand to cup her face, and kisses her like Rafal did, only her lips are warm and oh my god it is beautiful, and she knows: this. _This_ is love. 

_v. philautia (sophie)_

Sophie learns to love herself, in time.

She grows up. She stops trying so hard to please everyone. She gives what she wants to give, she lets herself be herself, she loves Nicola.

And the love makes her stronger. 

_She_ is stronger.

She is Sophie of Woods Beyond and she is finally happy.

* * *

_Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. ~Lin-Manuel Miranda_


End file.
